Unsustainable (July 2013), a crazy America fic
by crashedtimemachine
Summary: America is a nation in decline. He's running out of credibility, favors to call in, and money (one of his cities actually filed for bankruptcy, and more are expected to follow). England and France decide to check in on him. Historical Hetalia(-ish).


**Warnings: **Mental illness, the decline of a nation, current events

**Unsustainable, July 2013  
**_by crashedtimemachine_**  
**

After several weeks of increasingly concerning headlines, England figured he'd waited long enough.

Something _had_ to be done. He knew that America's pride was going to be the death of him; the stubborn young nation would never ask for help when he really needed it. (Even when France had backed him up in his _bloody_ revolution, it had been because _France_ had insisted on getting involved by recognizing America's_sovereignty_ and he wasn't even sure if he'd forgiven him for that yet and...well...now was perhaps not the time for churning up old grudges, given the current state of things...)

When he arrived at America's house, England was surprised to find the door wide open. (Wasn't America usually more guarded about his borders, even the metaphorical ones?)

The front porch steps creaked under his feet, and he tread carefully as he could without grabbing the dubiously shaky handrail. He entered uninvited (well, it did used to be _his_ house, after all) and flipped the entry light switch, but nothing happened. A strange feeling—something akin to parental concern—began to tighten in England's chest as he made his way through the house. Its current state of disrepair was..._alarming_, to say the least, and surely it was too quiet to be America's house. Where were the giant flat-screen televisions bursting with explosions? What of the stereo system America had boasted about so often, the one England had commented had too much bass and not enough real music?

"Hello...?" England called into the darkness.

The walls were conspicuously blank, as was the floor. It seemed the wall-to-wall carpet was missing; if he wasn't mistaken, the floor was, in fact, quite dubiously rotted-out in some areas so that the blackness of the cellar stared up at him from below.

Somewhere deeper inside the house _something_ crashed and and a muffled curse echoed against the empty walls.

"America...?" England called again, uncertainly. He stepped carefully to avoid the more rotten floorboards; he didn't trust them to bear his weight (and he couldn't fathom how they managed to support America's). "Are you in? I...tried to ring you, but..."

Another crash. A distant stream of expletives—"Dammit! Fuck! Shit! What the hell?!" The sound of feet stomping down the steps from the attic. America let out an admittedly high pitched, feminine squeal when he came nearly nose-to-nose with England and realized he wasn't alone.

England would have found his sheet white face and girlish antics quite amusing and teased him for it if he hadn't suddenly found the bite of steel against his forehead highly alarming. "N-now, America...calm down...there's no need for—"

"Whatcha want, England? Here t' scavenge what's left?" America pressed the barrel of the gun into England's skin. His tone was as cold as the metal, and anyone else might have mistaken America's exhaustion for drunkenness.

England knew better. He knew America, and he knew what he was seeing: a superpower in decline. It was never pretty when a country began the slow careening descent from the top, and even less so when it was happening to one of his own. Of course, it would be like America to fight it tooth and nail; the poor boy was always resistant to change that didn't occur on his own terms. (In some ways, England admired his persistence; he wasn't resigning himself to his fate, not the way England had just...given up in the end.)

"Scavenge..._what_? No, of course not. I'm here to help. Now get that gun out of my face—" he reached up and batted it away even as he said it, because the look on America's face had just turned so incredibly pitiful when he realized he wasn't under attack that England was sure the danger had passed. "—let's _talk_ about this."

"I...I'm running out of things...to sell..." America mumbled it under his breath, face turned slightly away, shadowed in the dim light of the hall.

His hands were shaking and the gun rattled conspicuously in the quiet. His free hand fumbled with something in his pocket, and America shoved what looked suspiciously like a handful of multi-colored pills—_prozac-ritalin-valium-percocet-paxil-viagra-xanax- zoloft-adderall-vitamin knockoffs_—into his mouth, swallowing the lot of them roughly. England wondered if, perhaps, America wasn't getting thinner underneath his heavy coat.

His blue eyes were distant, glassy, as if focused on something distant and intangible. "I thought...I could find something in the attic, but...it's dark, and...I don't have any candles..."

England would never admit (except perhaps to France, but only under the influence of alcohol) that feeling needed by America was _exhilarating_.

"'Allo?" Speak of the devil. "America? _Angleterre_?"

"We're back here, Fra—**AH!**" England abruptly dropped to the floor as America raised his gun again and fired off several warning shots toward the front entryway. "Would you _stop that_!" He scrambled to his feet intent on taking the pistol away, but pressed himself against the wall instead (just in case).

"Y-you could have hit me!" France's silhouette sauntered into the darkened hallway, hands on his hips, framed by the dim half-light from the open front door. "What an ungrateful little _brat_...we are here to _help_, you know..."

"Th-that's what China and Russia said b-before...!" America was still shakily holding the pistol at arm's length, but if France was intimidated, he didn't show it for once—which was perhaps as telling as anything else. "B-but they won't lend me anymore money...and..."

"America..." England touched his shoulder, but found the gun shoved into his face once more. This was starting to get tiresome.

"No. I c-can't trust any of you!" He alternated the gun back and forth between France and England, not sure which to shoot, which to trust, and apparently still possessed of just enough sanity not to shoot either of them (but not enough to trust either of them either). "Just go. Get out!"

England exchanged a glance with France, and then lowered his head. "Very well; we'll go. But, you know how to get in touch..."

"I _won't_!" America eyed them both like a wounded animal.

France was already backing out of the hallway. It seemed it was time to retreat. For now.

"I'm a _hero_!" America yelled after them, brandishing the gun like a banner. "I can take care of _myself_! You'll see! I'll be _fine_!"

They slipped out the door, followed closely by America's ranting diatribe about his greatness—_"I'm not gonna...you'll see...I'm...a hero..."_—and closed it behind them.

"Well..." England began, but faltered, unsure what to say. Instead, he let the silence settle in between them, neither comfortable nor familiar.

They walked away from the tumbledown home he had built with his own hands several centuries before in brittle silence, no more reassured than when they'd arrived.

..

* * *

**Notes:**

**- Cities and bankruptcy**: Detroit, Michigan files for bankruptcy and others are sure to follow?  
**- That's what China and Russia said…**: China and Russia have a pact that covers most aspects of foreign policy, economics, and military operations; they are also among the top 10 countries America owes debts to, and combined they are far above the second closest lenders—Japan, Switzerland, Brazil, and Taiwan—with whom we have much better diplomatic relations, over all; it's been theorized that a concerted attack on the United States by these two countries wouldn't come with military firepower, but cut-throat economic tactics. Combined with current economic policies in the United States, this could (in theory) lead to a full economic collapse.


End file.
